Excavator Fun

This morning when I woke up and opened my bedroom curtains I was greeted by the site of four large dump trucks and a big excavator sitting on the street in front of our home and the homes of our immediate neighbors.


I knew immediately why they were there--round two of the sink hole repair. Last year the street right next to the end of our neighbor's driveway collapsed. It was a good sized hole--more than a pot hole, but not a major sink hole like what appeared in that small Texas town earlier this month.

Anyway the city sent out a crew from its road department to repair it. In their infinite wisdom they decided it was a natural spring, not a water line leak (they checked for chlorine), and so they put some fill in the hole, compacted it, and paved over it. It wasn't even a month before water started bubbling up through the repair.

So here it is early spring of the following year and the city sent out the water line repair crew. Yes, it was a leak in the water line. (Duh!) They brought in some major equipment and dug up the water line and replaced some of it.

I immediately thought of Bentley. Would he like watching the crew at work? Although he loves to look at photos of heavy equipment and he's truly excited whenever he sees big machines or buses when we're driving around town, he doesn't like loud noises. Heavy duty equipment is noisy when it's being operated. Very noisy.

I decided I should at least give him the opportunity and see what he thought. After lunch I brought him over. For a while he watched through the living room window. Then I took him outside and we stood on the neighbor's lawn and checked out the action. Did you know that excavators can be used as compactors and forklifts? They had a real compactor that they used for one stage of the work, but more often they just pounded on the dirt with the shovel. The excavator is quite the all utility piece of equipment.

Bentley watched the action quite intently, but he didn't say much while we were outside. When he was watching from inside, he kept me informed of every dirt load they put back in the hole. I think he enjoyed the experience.


After a while he and I walked down to the park. He slid down the slides. We came home. He ate a little. Opa called from DC where he is on a business trip. While I chatted on the phone Bentley scattered the plastic ware across the kitchen floor. He hasn't done that in a while. Nice to know that this stage isn't done at two years and four months. It'll be forever until the twins will be done ransacking the cupboards. *sigh*


I gave Bentley the phone and then cleaned up the mess.


Afterwards we went out to the hot tub. He took his first head dunk. He was a good sport about it. You never know how young children are going to react. They keep life interesting.

P.S. My hard work in studying the names (i.e. repetitive reading with Bentley) of the heavy equipment is paying off. This afternoon I was able to impress the mothers of two other toddlers when I could tell them the proper name for a digger is an excavator. I was quite surprised that the one mom didn't know that as she had an almost three year old son. How does one avoid knowing such facts with a small boy in the house?!